GULFÀ (ISPAHÂN). - City of an Armenian colony in the Persian Empire.
When, in 1605, the Persian shah 'Abbâs conquered Greater Armenia, he deported several thousand Armenian families to Persia as a productive and civilizing element. There they founded a city called New G., which soon developed industrially and culturally. In the seventeenth century Western religious orders opened their missions there: the Carmelites in 1625, followed by the Capuchins, Jesuits, and Dominicans. In 1722 the shah Nâdir persecuted the Christians, many of whom emigrated from G. to Russia and the West. In 1828 the S. Congregation of Propaganda Fide sent the Armenian missionary G. Derderian to G.; in 1834 he obtained from the shah a decree of protection for the Armenian Catholic community. The Lazarists undertook the care of the Armenians, and in 1850 Pius IX established in G. an episcopal see dependent upon the primatial see of Constantinople.